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CLS Bank v. Alice Corporation II: more cutting-edge legal confusion

Confused? So is everyone else!

Legal confusion: There remains a lot of legal confusion in the US regarding the question, are software inventions patentable? How to answer this question? We could of course look at the letter of the law (e.g. 35 USC 101), which would give us the rather boring answer that software is patentable. But if someone doesn’t want software to be patentable (and a number of large powerful companies do not), that’s not the answer they want.

How else might we get an answer? In ancient Greece we might consult the Oracle at Delphi, or perhaps sacrifice a goat and examine its entrails. However in the modern US, we know that this is silly. As we all know, the modern US way to decide this is to put this question to a small panel of elderly individuals who know nothing about software or patent law. We call this small panel the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

To answer questions, the Oracle at Delphi inhaled vapors, fell into a trance, and then spoke in riddles. These were then interpreted by various priests. In much the same way, SCOTUS (hopefully without the aid of vapors) has given us some confusing and inconsistent rulings, such as the CLS Bank v. Alice Corporationdecision, that in essence are riddles that must be interpreted by various priests (e.g. lower courts, the USPTO).

So in “Alice”, SCOTUS told us that “abstract ideas” are patent ineligible, and also told us that “In any event, we need not labor to delimit the precise contours of the “abstract ideas” category in this case. It is enough to recognize that there is no meaningful distinction between the concept of risk hedging in Bilski and the concept of intermediated settlement at issue here. Both are squarely within the realm of “abstract ideas” as we have used that term.”

So the ruling in essence is the riddle: “abstract ideas are not allowed“, and “abstract ideas are undefined”. This is a pretty good riddle. So the next step is, now that the Oracle (err… SCOTUS) has spoken, how are the various priests (err… the USPTO and lower courts) going to interpret this riddle?

Some good news on this front. On December 16, 2014, the USPTO issued its “2014 Interim Guidance on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility”, available here:

Among other things, the USPTO appears to be heading towards the interpretation that when given incoherent rulings, at least try to minimize damage by applying the rulings narrowly. Thus the latest guidance instructs examiners to perform detailed analysis, and look for specific problems such as financial hedging and mitigating settlement risks, rather than generally rejecting everything. The Guidance also advises examiners that even if a patent hits on a “forbidden area” (judicial exemption), so long as the claim does not seek to tie up the judicial exemption so that others cannot practice it, the claim is probably OK. (Note added 4-26-16 — sadly the USPTO has not followed their own guidance consistently. The official patent examination “MPEP” rules for eligibility are still literally a blank page).